Call Of Duty: Ghosts hands-on preview and interview – ‘Call Of Duty is Call Of Duty’

GameCentral talks to the producer of the new Call Of Duty about everything from next gen AI and destructibility to competing with Titanfall.

Call Of Duty has never been more under fire than now. Thanks to Grand Theft Auto V it’s probably not going to be the biggest game of the year, Battlefield 4 will be providing the stiffest direct competition in its history, and gamers’ uncertainties over which format version to buy have left pre-orders at a recent low. Executive producer Mark Rubin is clearly aware of all these issues, but if he’s letting them get to him it’s not showing at all.

The last time we spoke to Rubin was at E3, when Call Of Duty: Ghosts was just being unveiled for the first time and when he and developer Infinity Ward were interested primarily in talking about the game’s new technology. But now with Ghosts less than two months from release the attention has turned to the story and gameplay, and we have a much clearer idea of what the game’s plot is about and how the multiplayer has changed.

To be honest we didn’t learn a lot more about the plot than you would have by watching the campaign trailer below, as what we were shown was the opening level involving the invasion of a US space station and the release of ‘kinetic rods’ into the continental United States. Based on real plans for outer space warfare these rods crack open the crust of North America and instantly turn the US from the only global superpower into a developing nation.

But all this we knew already and although the outer space sequence is a typically slick piece of cinematic action we still don’t know who exactly the bad guys are (they’re implied to be South American but Infinity Ward won’t confirm or deny anything) or what your specific mission is in the game.

What we do know though is that we’ve also playing the game’s multiplayer, fiddling with the new loadout system and playing a variety of maps across a random selection of game modes. The new map announced this week is called Stonehaven and is set in a ruined medieval castle, and according to Infinity Ward is one of the biggest maps they’ve ever worked on.

Call Of Duty: Ghosts – Stonehaven is dynamic but not necessarily destructible

It’s certainly a change of scenery, with the other maps offering a more traditional Call Of Duty style setting in the snowy wastes of Whiteout and the bombed out city centre of Chasm. (Because people are voting on which maps they want to play at the preview we don’t see much of the other two unveiled maps, but Strikezone is set in a baseball stadium and Octane centres around a deserted petrol station.)

All the maps seem very good but even though we’re playing on an Xbox One, and despite the stories of destructible scenery, they really do seem almost indistinguishable from previous games. But we later clarify with Mark Rubin that there’s been a certain misunderstanding about what Ghosts’ promise of ‘dynamic maps’ actually means and after speaking with him we only wish we’d seen pre-order bonus Free Fall, or that someone had triggered one of the maps’ special features.

They didn’t though and so ALL we got were a couple of very smartly designed maps, where in Chasm in particular there was a mad rush to activate your own attack dog killstreak. This was only on the second in the strike chain, after a boring old drone, and had Riley the wonder dog running around with you, attacking enemies and warning you of when they were nearby – which created a strange sense of computerised camaraderie.

In terms of game modes old reliables such as Team Deathmatch and Domination (take over the three control points) were present amongst new ideas such as Search & Rescue (a cross between Search & Destroy and Kill Confirmed where collecting a team-mate’s dog tags revives them), Cranked (once you get one kill you get movement and reload bonuses but then have to get another kill in 30 seconds or you explode), and Blitz (get to the opposing team’s zone to score a point).

On top of these was the new idea of Field Orders, special objectives you’re given if you kill the top player on the other side (we don’t know how we managed that) and involve simple things like shooting someone from behind or getting a certain number of headshots.

In terms of loadouts there’s a new class of weapon called the marksman rifle, which sits between sniper rifles and assault rifles, and there’s the usual selection of strike chains and perks – with the latter now organised into seven different categories: speed, handling, stealth, awareness, resistance, equipment, and elite.

There’s plenty that is different and, we’re willing to believe, improved but absolutely nothing that will silence the franchise’s usual detractors. But as we speak to Mark Rubin we begin to understand his difficult position, and are once again impressed by his honesty and openness. Call Of Duty is the success it is because it is the same core game each year, not despite it.

And as we speak to Rubin about the dynamic maps and the new Squads mode (a replacement for Special Ops which hasn’t been shown to the press yet) we become unashamedly excited about Ghosts. Call Of Duty isn’t a game that’s ever likely to see a radical overhaul, but if you enjoy it and want to keep playing it then Infinity Ward seem to have found plenty of good reasons to continue.

GC: This is a common problem for a lot of cross-generation games, particularly ones that are part of a long-running franchise, but are you satisfied you’ve done enough to demonstrate the next gen versions of Ghosts are a clear step forward for the series?

MR: Well, I think we definitely went a step ahead. It’s just a matter of how far we can go. And that actually has a very strong historical basis to show what’s going to happen. I don’t think anybody’s kidding themselves when they think that the first few series of games are going to hit along the obvious… the easy low-hanging fruit of what the next gen offers. And as time goes on we’re going to get more and more complex, and more and more use out of the technology, and we’ll see better and better looking games.

So the obvious example is Call Of Duty 2 – a launch title on the 360, a fantastic looking game when it launched… but it looks like absolute garbage compared to what we can do now [laughs].

GC: That’s true but when it came out its multiplayer features were something brand new, even if the visuals were slightly underwhelming.

MR: But it was still one of the best-looking games on the 360 when it first came out.

GC: I guess it was, but regardless of that the multiplayer was the thing that took it forward. It was something that hadn’t been seen, really, in the previous gen. I just don’t get the feeling that Ghosts has that equivalent feature or gameplay leap. Are you worried people are going to think it’s the same old thing and other games are going to jump ahead of it?

MR: Not really, if you think about it there’s no technical ‘Oh my god, next gen allows you to do new gameplay’. There’s no gameplay that next gen allows you to do that you couldn’t do on current gen. I mean, gameplay has never been held back from a technical standpoint. That would be a silly excuse. So really…

GC: But doesn’t that create an even bigger problem in that you’ve kind of got nowhere to go? I mean I played Titanfall the other day and, unsurprisingly, it looks a lot like COD – from the colour palette to the fact that there are lots of not-very-sci-fi crates everywhere. But it is still something different nevertheless.

MR: Yeah, but it’s not Call Of Duty… You’re asking a question like if I were to go to a football match and they decided, today, they were only going to do seven players per side and if you’re in your own half you can use your hands. And I would see a bunch of English people sitting around say, ‘That’s interesting… drink my beer, get a good laugh out of it, that was cute – now go back to playing 11-on-11.

We make Call Of Duty, so Call Of Duty is not something that you’re just going to dramatically go and change into something completely different just because there’s some new tech in front of you. There’s no new platform thing that makes Call Of Duty need to be different. We make the most popular game in the world because of what it is. Call Of Duty is Call Of Duty and if you want to treat it like a sport like football or basketball then that might actually make more sense to people, because this is the game that they want to play.

So what next generation brings is simply put at the moment – and I say that because the beginning of a console generation change is always the sort of awkward date moment, you’re just trying to figure out what each of you can do and what you guys want out of the relationship and as you go further and further along into the generation cycle you start to develop more and more understanding of the technology.

So the obvious thing that’s gonna happen for most all games that are trying to make the same game that they were making on the current gen, in a sense, is that it’s just gonna be graphically different. So for instance, FIFA isn’t gonna be a different game it’s going to be a graphically improved version of itself. Forza the same way, things that are well-defined games are going to look graphically better. It may not be dramatically better, yet especially, but I think that will improve over time – as I said, as we get to know each other better – but it seems silly to think that just because there’s a new console, some new tech that allows the game to be prettier, that all of a sudden you should stop doing the successful Call Of Duty game and make something completely different.

And we could, that would be the easy way out. To be honest it would be way easier, as a studio, as a developer, for us to go make something completely new. Because then we’re not bound by the rules of Call Of Duty, we can just go and do whatever we want. But we would never be as a successful as Call Of Duty because Call Of Duty is what’s popular. And that’s why Treyarch makes games that are also as popular. And we make them differently, if you talk to pro players they think Black Ops and Modern Warfare are dramatically different games… [laughs] I can’t see the kind of subtlety that they see but I respect their opinion on that.

So we’re interested in making Call Of Duty better and more interesting every year, regardless of some technology change.

Mark Rubin – he has a difficult job

GC: That seems a perfectly reasonable answer to me, but does that imply that in 10 to 20 years, when we’re running around on holodecks, that Call Of Duty will still be…

MR: [laughs] Call Of Duty on a holodeck would be so awesome!

GC: Will we still be playing something similar? Something without much destructibility, static levels, with no vehicles and it will still be recognisably the same gameplay? Just as football and golf will be the same.

MR: It’s very possible. See, Call Of Duty has sort of bounced out of the normal genre of ‘gamer games’. Most games are honestly limited in their sales by the fact that they are only played mostly by gamers – it’s not a 100 per cent line obviously, there is a percentage – but for us there’s such a dramatic difference. Ignoring GTA V for the moment, if we sold half as many copies as we did last year we would still be the top-selling game this year.

And the main reason is we have so many people that play our games who aren’t gamers – don’t care about game sites, don’t read game news, don’t know anything… not even don’t care, they just don’t know. And all they do is they play Call Of Duty, and they might play FIFA or Madden NFL or something – they play a sports game and Call Of Duty and that’s it.

So it’s very possible that although Call Of Duty will continue to change and iterate and grow and become, I think, better versions of itself it’s still going to remain… a Call Of Duty game. ‘Cause otherwise we’re not making Call Of Duty, we’re not making something else.

GC: Somebody really should invent an agreed upon name for those sorts of players.

MR: [laughs] I’ve said that in interviews actually, I don’t know what to call these people.

GC: Well, the obvious word is ‘casual gamers’, but of course that already means something slightly different in gaming.

MR: Uh huh. That’s true, but they might play more than I do. I’m a hardcore gamer, I play tons of games: iPad games, MMOs, on PC and every console… and yet these guys might actually put more hours into play than I do.

GC: They’re very specific, almost tunnel vision…

MR: Yeah.

GC: Since you’re in that position, and a sports game can’t really do it, have you ever thought of trying to use the Call Of Duty name as a marquee for other styles of game? Because I know there have been quite advanced plans for a number of spin-offs that never seem to have worked out?

MR: I think we’ve done that, haven’t we? I mean Zombies…

GC: I guess, but it’s still a first person shooter.

MR: Oh, I see.

GC: Because a great game comes out and it does badly and then I wonder, if that was called Call Of Duty something would it do better?

MR: Like a turn-based strategy version of Call Of Duty? [laughs]

GC: Well, you know… why not?

MR: Actually, and don’t take this seriously, but I think it would be really fun to do a MOBA version of Call Of Duty. [laughs]

GC: MOBAs are another weird thing. I’ve said before to developers that bring them up: they’re played by millions of people and yet no gamer I’ve ever spoken to has ever mentioned them, no journalist has ever even whispered the name. So who are these people that are playing them? It’s a bit like COD where the games are so successful they create their own sort of isolationist community.

MR: A broader one, but yes. The League Of Legends stuff is really interesting because not only does it have a very insular group but the barrier to entry is amazing!

GC: It is! It’s such a complicated game and he community is so unwelcoming and horrible!

MR: [laughs] Yeah.

GC: Which I guess is another comparison with COD as one of the main things that put off a lot of people from the series is all the angry 12-year-olds playing online.

MR: Yeah, well hopefully the new Squads mode actually kind of helps there because they get to play multiplayer, they get to experience all the levelling and it’s not like they’re wasting their time levelling – they’re actually levelling their real characters. And they’re experiencing multiplayer in a way that actually feels like they’re playing against real people… without angry 12-year-olds.

Call Of Duty: Ghosts – Chasm is likely to be popular with all ages

GC: Was that the primary thinking behind Squads? Is there any particular reason why it’s come in now? Were you trying to get rid of Special Ops or were you trying to introduce Squads?

MR: We were trying to introduce Squads, and we can’t do everything so we had to cut something. But that wasn’t the only reason, we had a bunch of different ideas in our heads… and so when you look at Squads one of the things that you might even say is a negative is it’s so broad a spectrum of what you can and want to do in that mode. Maybe that’s a positive, maybe that’s a negative. It depends on who you ask, but for instance we have me and my squad, that I’ve created, against random AI. Which is for people who want to experience MP [multiplayer] without the angry 12-year-olds, they just want to play the game.

GC: I guess it’s a better version of having a bot fight?

MR: Kind of yeah, for that part. But there are two big differences. The first is that we’ve really significantly improved the AI to act like a player instead of just a bot. But the main difference is that you create the squad that you’re going to play with. So in most of the bot mode games that we’ve had in the past the bots are just sort of random and they don’t have any sort of sense of who they are, but here you decide what they look like. You name them, you give them their equipment, and they’ll alter their behaviour based on the equipment that you give them.

And that’s the war game mode of Squads, but we also have 1 vs. 1 so there’s a whole competitive mode where you and I can play against each other but it would be me with my squad and you with your squad. We would play on a 6 vs. 6 map and then it’s not only my personal skills versus your personal skill but it’s my skill at being strategic about what I choose for my other squad-mates versus your skill on that.

And then there’s another aspect that is the asynchronous stuff. You create a squad, you pick a map, and you pick a mode to defend on and then you go to work. And then I’m at home and I have you on my Friends List, or I’ve been match-made with you, and then I play your squad on the map that you chose in the mode that you chose. And I’m trying with my squad – or with five other friends we’re fighting your squad – and I’m seeing how my squad ranks up against your squad. And while you’re offline, if you do well, you’re earning XP for your squad-mates.

GC: That sounds great. But, and I’m sure this is very insulting to programmers, but I’m always concerned that gaming has never really seen a quantum leap in artificial intelligence in the same way graphics are always improving. I’ve always assumed that’s simply because good AI doesn’t look good in a screenshot?

MR: No, it’s most actually that it’s…

GC: Hard to do?

MR: [laughs] Well, it’s hard to do and the processing power to do it hasn’t been as readily available, even on next gen we’ve got a ways before… the leap into the tech has to happen before we can make the leap in the AI. So the leap to the new tech is happening now and as we become more familiar with that tech we’ll all be able to make leaps into more AI.

But I do have to say that the AI we did on this game, we had several coders working on it the entire two years of development to make basically a whole new AI system that isn’t like unbelievably crazy, more complex but what it is that we crafted the direction of what we were trying to differently. So AI in single-player is basically guys that are supposed to look like people doing things that they would be doing in that world.

So they’re taking cover, they look smart, they’re trying to move around and flank, they’re staying undercover and firing over the thing, they’re doing things that make them look like people. But what we did is instead of bringing that AI into multiplayer and having the bots look like that we made them look like players. So they run around the map the way players run around the map, they drop-shot which I hate when people do that to me.

GC: [quizzical look]

MR: When you go straight to prone and then shoot up. [Mimes drop-shotting someone] Argh!

GC: I see.

MR: They jump shot. They’ll come around a corner and as soon as they see you they’ll jump up and try and shoot you from up high so you’ll miss them. They’ll knee slide, they’ll corner camp so that they’ll know they’re guarding the C flag and they’ll corner camp somewhere and you’ll come around and they’ll shoot you from behind. They’ll act like players: they’ll side strafe, they’ll move the way players move – it’s not that it’s a more complicated cake, there’s no new cake technology, but we built that cake differently. And it’s a different looking cake and different artistic take on that cake.

GC: Sounds tasty. I’m still trying to think of a name for these casual players…

MR: [laughs]

GC: These unnamed gamers, which I suppose is pretty accurate, as I’m sure they don’t think of themselves as gamers. What do they ask for when you’re quizzing them about plans for a new game? Do they just sit there and say I don’t know? Or do they just ask for the graphics to be better or something?

MR: A lot of times they just say they don’t know.

GC: See that’s the only time you can understand hardcore gamers getting snobbish about the situation. It’s okay that they like the game but you just wish they weren’t so unthinking about it all. They don’t seem to care about anything, they just want to keep being fed.

MR: They appreciate everything you give, but… they don’t think about games in the same way that gamers think about games. For them it’s entertainment when they come home from work and that’s all it is. They don’t have to get emotionally connected to whatever they’re doing. A lot of the people that I talk to that are like that are sports guys. When we launched MW3 I got to meet Ashley Cole – which for me was a huge thing because I’m actually a football fan…

GC: Oh, okay. I’m not, but even I’ve heard of him!

MR: [laughs] And he actually asked for my autograph, which I thought was amazing. And I asked him, ‘What kind of games do you play?’ and he didn’t know what to say. Just Call Of Duty, that’s it. He’s really good at it though!

Call Of Duty: Ghosts – Whiteout is a new map but it’s still a very familiar one

GC: Well, just going back to what I was saying earlier, is there any way to introduce these people to new things? Any way to broaden their experience of games? I got the feeling Strikeforce didn’t go that well in Black Ops II, which implies not even COD can inspire them to try new things. You’ve just found what they want – playing soldiers – and that’s it.

MR: If you know the answer to that one can you email it to me?

All: [laughs]

MR: Yeah, I’m not sure I know the answer to that. We try to introduce a lot of new types of gameplay, like the asynchronous style stuff, we’re doing the clan stuff where there’s a meta game outside of the game… will that change these players? [laughs] You really never know until you get there. I think Zombies actually, to be bluntly honestly did that. I think we created a group of people that only play Zombies and for them that’s the primary reason for playing Call Of Duty, so I would say that’s the closest we’ve come.

GC: I guess, but it’s baby steps really, isn’t it?

MR: Yeah, but it’s like put a few things out. Nope, they didn’t like any of them. Here’s some more cards and oh! We got one! But it’s still a baby step every time. I think.

GC: The only problem I had with the hands-on just now is that because I knew the game had a new feature in the destructible scenery I was constantly on the lookout for it and got disappointed every time I didn’t find it. Do you feel that’s a rod to your back now, that if you hadn’t mentioned it people wouldn’t be asking after it all the time?

MR: [laughs] Actually, there’s a little bit of a misunderstanding here and it’s kind of our fault, because it’s been a really difficult thing to message. Dynamic maps isn’t destructibility. In fact in some maps there’s no destructibility whatsoever – it’s something else. So, it’s a broad term for having maps that have something interesting happening. So there are two sorts of flavours, one flavour is a sort of big destructible map-changing event. And another flavour is smaller tactical player-driven changes to the flow of the map.

So what we’ve really tried to do is focus in on variety for every map, so every map is different. The snow map has the ability to call in a satellite that crashes into a part of the map and destroys that part of the map.

GC: [surprised] Oh, okay.

MR: So you never saw that?

GC: No, that never happened when I was playing.

MR: Strikezone, which maybe you also played, has the ability to call in a kinetic rod that comes in and absolutely obliterates the entire map. The whole map completely changes and you’re basically playing on a new map. Octane has some destructible points, it has a gas station that you can blow up and then that falls over and creates new cover. It has a couple of places where you have a wall you can blow out that gives you new places to snipe from and creates new sight lines. It also, on certain modes, has a container that you can blow open and inside is a care package.

And those are the modes that we’re showing and then there are some other modes where it’s just you can move some objects out of the way and open pathways. And maybe there’s some areas where there’s big sort of garage doors – metal, gated garage doors – and you can open and close those gates. There’s another map that has something as simple as an old medieval gates that you can open and close. And that obviously changes the shape of the map and so controlling those points becomes important for the strategy of playing that game.

Sometimes it’s setting traps, something that can kill other players, so there’s a wide variety – every map offers something different. Oh, and then there’s another map that’s purely environmental, not player controlled at all. It’s a building that’s crashed over and it’s falling down between two buildings.

GC: Free Fall?

MR: Yeah. And it’s sliding down and as it’s sliding down the map starts to change shape, like walls fall over or things fall into the map and create new sight lines or new pathways. So it’s really about bringing single-player cinematic moments to multiplayer and also adding new gameplay elements that aren’t based on what we normally know from Call Of Duty, which is your weapons or your equipment or your kill streak.

So calling in the dog is a moment. But these would be moments that are based on the map itself rather than stuff you’re carrying as a player. So those are the two sorts of directions we wanted to go and we actually at one point early in development we had started creating every map the same. And that was all just about destructibility, it was all about destroy the map in some grandiose way and maybe even do something where it was like start off in a plane and then the plane crashes and now you’re playing on the ground after the crash.

The problem was that every map was that same thing and it became kind of monotonous. Even though it was cool, each moment was cool the first time you saw it, repetitively going from map to map and having the map change dramatically each time was actually tiresome to players.

GC: That is one thing I worry about with Titanfall: you kept hearing them say and do the same things. I only played it twice in a row but the first time a cruiser turns up halfway through and that’s unexpected. But the second time it does it again and it’s…. okay, whatever.

MR: [knowing laugh]

GC: I get the impression, much like vehicles, destructibility isn’t something you want. Even if it was a trivial thing to include, from a technical standpoint, you wouldn’t because as you said earlier that’s not what Call Of Duty is.

MR: Yeah, it doesn’t really make sense for our style of game.

GC: Because the way you design a level there’s supposed to be a wall there?

MR: Yeah, yeah. And if we do change it there’s a balanced out reason to change it. And if we were doing a bigger map, if we had vehicles, if we were Battlefield it would make sense.

GC: And I ask you that not because I want you to be Battlefield…

MR: No, no. Sure.

GC: But often hardcore gamers do seem to want you to be, they say you can’t do these things – they imply it’s not a choice but an inability on your part. It’s typical gamer mentality really, where they want everything to be the same.

MR: Yeah, yeah.

GC: So just finally, and I’m always interested in this question with developers, when do you start on the next game? Do you wait until the first one’s finished?

MR: Oh yeah, we’re so all hands on deck right now!

GC: So you wait and see how new features have been received?

MR: It’s not so much waiting to see how it’s been received, as waiting because we just can’t work on it right now. So we are literally all hands on finishing Ghosts.

GC: So you finish, you have your holiday, you come back, and start the cycle again?

MR: Holiday? Sorry?

GC: I don’t really understand the concept myself, it’s just a phrase I heard.

MR: [laughs] Well, you know one of the things for us obviously is once we’ve finished the game and get it out it’s not always finished. We have to keep supporting it. A lot of people continue to work on the game post-launch. And then DLC, we have tons of maps and you have to make a bunch of content. So a lot of people a year after we’ve shipped Ghosts finally stop working on Ghosts!

So it’s sort of a gradual thing, but the single-player guys kind of get a head start because once they’re finished they’ve pretty much finished and can start rolling into trying to come up with what the next game’s going to be from a single-player standpoint. The multiplayer guys don’t really get a chance to work on the multiplayer for the next game until almost halfway through development.

GC: Oh, that’s interesting.

MR: Maybe a third of the way, a quarter of the way… So it’s a significant challenge, especially on a game we know is going to come out every year.

GC: There were suggestions at one point that you’d have three studios working on their own game, so you’d have three years each time instead of two. Would you welcome that? Because two years is is an average I guess for most games nowadays.